Top reasons and effective ways to stockpile coffee

Coffee is considered to be a valuable commodity, especially for long-term storage. Especially when natural disasters are becoming increasingly frequent, you need to invest more time and money into prepping. As you delve deeper into possible global disasters, you would take preparedness more seriously knowing that the worst is yet to come.

Since coffee is a valuable commodity not only to the preppers community but even globally, you may want to start stockpiling some now. Even when no disaster happens, you can find ways to sell your stockpiled coffee beans, since the market loves it!

For this article, I would first tell you why stockpiling coffee is good for your normal everyday life and when things go gloomy. The second part would be focused on tried and tested methods of stockpiling coffees which you can employ to keep your coffee beans.

REASONS TO STOCKPILE COFFEE

You do need to dig up some money from your pockets to stockpile coffee, but it is worth it. Here are some reasons why stockpiling coffee is good for you in the short-term and the long-run.

Reason 1: Ensuring that you have enough energy

Even when SHTF, we may want to have some of the basics in terms of caffeine, sufficient enough for us to bring up useful energy to overcome hardships that one may face. Taking the right amount of coffee would pump our ‘fight or flight’ response, at times when we need it the most!

Coffee is capable of increasing your brain receptor activity up to 65%, which is really important to keep yourself alert and this would boost your ability to adapt to dangerous situations. When things go south and things turn gloomy, having sufficient coffee at your disposal may just be the thing that can help boost you and your family’s morale to get on with what everyone needs to do for survival.

Even in our everyday context, being one of those folks who live in a nine-to-five world and we just want to make it through the day without sleeping, coffee may just be what we need! Caffeine can help you release energy-giving hormones into your body, supercharging you with the energy you need.

Especially in situations of disaster where you are under stress and tiredness, coffee may be just the thing to help. Since alertness is essential in such situations, you may want to start stockpiling coffee!

Reason 2: Health Benefits

Research have shown that coffee can guard you from a number of diseases such as Parkinson’s disease, cancer, heart failure and type 2 diabetes. The more ‘right amount’ of coffee you take, the lower your chances you will suffer from these health problems.

Coffees are also rich with antioxidants, which are essential for preventing oxidation of your body. Basically, ‘oxidation’ is a chemical chain reaction that would lead to damaging your body cells. As you keep drinking coffee with moderations, you get to keep diseases at bay while preventing even diseases like Alzheimer’s dementia and stroke.

Do note that pure caffeine will dehydrate you, but you can add coffee to filtered purified water to solve this. Sometimes, you just want to make your water more palatable in such situations and adding caffeine may just be the trick!

Furthermore, it is proven that coffee can help you reduce headache and diminish migraine. It can also help to mitigate unpleasant withdrawal symptoms for those who are dependent on caffeine, which is essential when disaster happens.

Reason 3: Using coffee as currency

Since the early 1500’s, coffee bean has been traded as a valuable form of currency. Even today, there is a global stock exchange that is dedicated to coffee beans. One fun fact, is that the most expensive kinds of coffee beans are worth their weight in gold.

Through findings and speculation, after a disaster or an economic collapse, the value of coffee will rise due to its inherent survival utility. Therefore, keeping coffee beans properly stored is a skill you have to master if you want to start stockpiling coffee as a commodity.

Reason 4: Save Money!

Believe it or not, stockpiling actually saves you money if you do it right. By keeping coffee beans at rock bottom price, you do not need to pay for the full price when you need to have it. This is especially true when disasters happen, and everyone around you starts understanding the value of coffee. Remember, it pays to be self-sufficient and not rely on other people or organizations during times of crisis.

Especially when a nation collapses, the money would be of no value. Although stockpiling gold and silver would be great, coffee is a more practical option because it is less expensive to stockpile. But this of course depends on the type of coffee bean you want to buy! You can use coffee to barter with other survivalists in times of needs and use it as a bargaining chip when threatening situations occur.

As for your everyday life, you can choose to just grab something from your stockpile instead of running to the store to get it. Even when you face job loss and your source of income stopped tomorrow, you are capable of keeping your family fed for months. Other practical benefits would include you being able to help others as you can donate a fraction of your stockpile to the needy.

Lastly, you can be sure that you have peace of mind knowing you have sufficient stockpile at home! The feeling of knowing you are prepare for almost anything the future holds would be priceless.

Reason 5: Keep your soil fertile!

This would be essential when you have a garden of your own because coffee grounds can really aid to enrich your soil. If your soil is richer, you would tend to get higher yield or even higher quality fruits, vegetables or even herbs.

Coffee grounds can act as an ant repellant as well.

EFFECTIVE WAYS TO STOCKPILE COFFEE

There are some general rules that you need to keep in mind before delving into the methods stated below. Coffee is only capable of keeping its freshness, potency and value best when it is in bean form. Therefore, it is important that you invest in a small manual hand-crank grinder so that you can brew your coffee fresh, without reliance on electricity.

Remember, you should not only store coffee, but also coffee-making essentials. Storing your coffee-making tools properly would be key to stockpiling coffee for future use, but it would not be covered in this article. Here, I would not only focus on stockpiling coffee per se, but also some necessary ingredients that you need to make ‘edible’ coffee when disaster strikes.

Method 1: Keeping it properly

Remember to only buy vacuum sealed coffee beans, especially when you intend to stockpile them. Later, keep these packs of coffee in an airtight container to ensure that its freshness can be kept long-term. Alternatively, you can choose to store the coffee in a standard Mason jar to keep its freshness.

As of now, the industry is starting to come up with better coffee packaging such as bags with zip-top seals. Mason jars are especially for people who have multiple coffees in storage, and it may be a more cost effective and organized way to store coffee in general.

Even for vacuum-sealed containers, you have to invest some cash to get long-lasting quality containers. Usually, it would involve you pressing the lid onto the coffee so that you can force out the air in the jar, so that it can be stored longer. The other option would be to purchase coffee which is sealed properly.

There are several aspects you need to consider, such as the climate in your area, the limited space you have and learning how to keep it organized. By knowing when your surrounding climate would be colder or warmer, you would be able to adjust accordingly so that you can ensure that you maximized the shelf life of your stockpile and keep those dirty pests away!

As for space to stockpile, it is best that you get creative with this! You have to consider both your living space and climate to effectively stockpile with minimal space. You can consider stocking some well-kept coffee out in the garage, some in the basement or even hide it under your bed.

But no matter how much coffee you keep, it won’t be of any use if it’s not organized. Remember to have a system that works for you, so that you can efficiently use it in times of need. If you stockpile things other than coffee, you may want to organize your things in a way where the items you most frequently use front and center. Your heavier items should be way below your pile and you can label your stockpiles to easily identify them.

Method 2: Understanding what you purchase

You have to know whether the coffee that you buy can be kept for the long-term, and the rough estimation of its shelf-life. For example, you can purchase unroasted canned green coffee beans which has a shelf life of almost 20 years, which is much better than purchasing cans of coffee that can be kept for a few years.

Although it is fun to buy and drink whole bean fresh coffee, you have to keep in mind how much of this coffee you can drink and consume the following weeks.

You have to keep the shelf-life of your coffee in check, where it would be good for you to rotate through them and buy more fresh stock when the old ones run out. Some instant coffee can last for longer periods of time if you store them properly as well. Having this information would be imperative!

Especially when natural calamities happen, and you are forced to stay indoors for many days, understanding the shelf-life of your coffee would do wonders. You will know which stash to consume first, and which stash to keep. Do note that coffee is only one such kind of survival food, you may have to consider wheat for energy and other items as well.

Method 3: Keeping clean water

When SHTF, water may be a scarce resource, especially clean water. Now, your emergency water supply is key for survival, and you need to maximize the usage of this clean water. Some methods of storing water for coffee would be owning a food-grade container and a weighing scale so you can know the sums of mineral salt you need to add into the water.

In your stockpile, you should have clean water and even water filters. Primitive water filtering would be useful as well where you put together a system of rocks and different types of soil. You do not need to worry that the water is not palatable, because your coffee can help you with that.

You water must be distilled water, meaning that rain water will not work. Other tools you can consider is an AeroPress, which is great for brewing coffee at low temperature and would be lightweight. Other things you may want to look into is to keep your water containers properly sealed and determine how sensitive you and your loved ones are to different kinds of consumables.

Coffee can help in keeping you alert, but if you do not have a healthy body, you can be sure that your potential to survive a disaster would be much lower!

Conclusion

You have to understand the value of being self-reliant to truly be a prepper. Even if the worst dawn upon you and your family, you are still capable of keeping you and your loved one going because you are more ‘prepared’ than another.

You can say that after a disaster, or a post-apocalyptic world, coffee would be a survival enthusiast’s best friend, and it’s worth would increase tremendously. Since our contemporary society adores coffee to the point that most people are dependent on it, the value of coffee would no doubt increase.

Looking at some coffee stats, you can see how coffee is often wanted by people. As of now, coffee is the United States’ second most valuable commodity, just below oil! There are more than 100 million US drinkers and at least 30 million Americans drink 5 cups of coffee a day. Looking at the facts and figures, it would be wise that you start stockpiling and learning up the skill.